


This Modern Love

by pyrimidine



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-23 11:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrimidine/pseuds/pyrimidine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is a trufax robot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Modern Love

**i.**

“We’re going to be sticking around for a while, so I need someone I can trust,” the voicemail says. “I’ve been working with another guy. He’s good. If you need something to do, just know that there’s a place for you.”

Eames has been following the sun around the globe for almost a year, departing and arriving often enough to the point where continent or country names have long since been jumbled up and forgotten, and the only thing he ever remembers are the varied colors of terrain that have been underfoot.

Spending a year suffering from the night before is starting to wear on him. Too much of a good thing and all that. He’s also broke to the point of it being slightly worrisome.

It takes Eames two months to call Cobb back and accept the offer, but to his credit, he’s had his mind made up for just as long.

 

 **ii.**

Eames has papers in his hands. Very important papers with very important bits of research that he’s supposed to be summarizing. But the job could be done by a mute donkey, so instead Eames has been watching Arthur for the past twenty minutes or so. This is the first time he’s met the famed Arthur, who is just as efficient as Cobb has been building him up to be.

“Christ, you’re like a robot,” Eames finally says. He’s discovered that Arthur is very easy to rile up and has been coming at that from different angles, much like shaking tree branches to see which one yields the most fruit.

This time, Arthur only smiles and touches his nose.

 

 **iii.**

Turns out the American government is even more of a mess than Eames had previously thought.

“I don’t believe it,” he says flatly.

“Think, Eames. You can take on the form and mannerisms of thousands of people. If I even said so much as a name to you, you’d automatically list their tics, their families, what they keep in their desk drawers,” Cobb says, in his unique way of completely roundabout and mangled storytelling. “You become them.”

“You flatter me, Cobb, do continue.”

Cobb purses his lips at him. Eames gets back on track: “Yes, but I do that in _dreams_. I don’t understand your point.”

“Exactly. Dreams make all that possible for you. And PASIV makes dreams possible, and science makes PASIV possible,” Cobb traces out loud. “If you take that into account, do you really doubt that _this_ , this is possible?”

Somewhere along the past year, Eames had heard about Cobb leaving the government program. What he hadn’t heard was that Cobb had also made off with a prototype Jack-of-all-trades for dreamscapes. The perfect Point Man in the form of an android. Apparently an insignificant detail, as far as Cobb was concerned.

Eames’s gaze slides over to Arthur, who has his head down and is rifling through an accordion folder. He seems like any other frustrated person in the world. When he looks up, his forehead furrows into three lines. One eyebrow is slightly higher than the other.

Strangely enough, Eames is the one to look away first.

 

 **iv.**

Arthur smiles at Cobb’s jokes. He sits down and writes into a notebook he keeps perched on his knees. Sometimes his shirt gets untucked in the back, which he fails to notice. Occasionally his research will be wrong.

But he’s only wrong because the source material is wrong. He doesn’t jog his leg up and down or otherwise fidget. His hands don’t shake. He rarely blinks, and when he does, there’s something unnerving about it.

“You’re far too bland for an android,” Eames comments. Part of him is holding out for Cobb to break into a grin and launch into an explanation about it all being some elaborate joke. In the mean time, he’s still poking at it, testing it.

“I was made to blend in, not to be flashy,” Arthur responds with patience, exactly like he’s been doing every time Eames makes a comment.

But Arthur _is_ flashy, in a subtle way. He always looks at everyone a little too long, long enough to pique their attention but not long enough to induce discomfort. He’s lean, almost sinewy, with proportions and a clothing taste that leave people staring after him without even realizing it.

Like now, with Eames, who realizes he’s been staring only when Arthur speaks again: “Do you know, the brain is basically electrical circuitry.”

Eames does know this. Still, he says, “Please expound.”

“Current is measured in voltage, and neurons send impulses in millivolts. It’s just a measure of electron movement in both cases. Easy to emulate through modern science.”

“I do so love when you use big words,” Eames says, only half-sarcastic. “Please, go on.”

“For example, I have a ‘reptilian brain’, which lets me know that I am physically attracted to you, at a base level. This cannot be helped. But I also have,” Arthur continues before Eames can interject, “a higher cortical level that, while it is consciously appreciative of your voice and accent, lets me override the lower functioning brain parts by cluing me in to the fact that you’re ultimately too smarmy and irksome for my tastes.”

“Decision making,” Eames sums up. “Also, you have tastes?”

Arthur only confirms, “Decision making.”

“What about your physical parts? Do you have all 207 bones?” Eames smiles.

“There are 206 bones in the human body, unless you're making a crude joke. I’m assuming you laid that trap on purpose and this is me sidestepping it,” Arthur says, easy as anything. “Anyway. It’s just a mound. A smooth mound.”

Eames straightens up before he can help it. “Are you honestly telling me that they would program the number of eyelashes you have but they would fail to give you -- ”

“Joke, Mr. Eames,” Arthur cuts in. He smiles faintly. “Another advantage of that higher cortical level.”

He turns his attention back to the drafting table. “I am, by all appearances, human. But I appreciate your investment in my physical well-being.”

“If you could be programmed to fall madly in love with me, I would propose marriage right this moment. After all, there aren’t any laws barring that from happening,” Eames says, leaning closer to Arthur once more.

When Arthur smiles at the blueprints, Eames is taken aback once again by how natural it all seems.

 

 **v.**

And yet, he doesn’t truly believe it until Arthur and Cobb go under, leaving Eames awake as the spotter.

Arthur falls asleep like everyone else, limbs slightly askew. His wrists are smooth, pale, and lacking a pulse. Eames pauses, then uses his thumb and index finger to touch the curve right below the corners of Arthur’s jawbone. No pulse.

Five minutes to go. Eames kneels down and places his hand over Arthur’s chest. He leaves it there for a long time, studying Arthur’s face, feeling absolutely nothing beneath his palm.

After they wake up, Arthur doesn’t look Eames in the eye for the rest of the day, like he knows.

 

 **vi.**

It takes a bit of convincing, but Eames eventually gets Cobb to let him take Arthur out. He would have taken Arthur out anyway, despite the answer.

Cobb leans in close. “No alcohol. We still don’t know what would happen.”

Eames nods.

When they get to the bar, he orders them two scotches, neat. Arthur swirls his glass around, sniffs it curiously, then proceeds to down the entire drink at once. Both of them sit in silence for at least a minute afterward. Eames prays that nothing short-circuits.

When Arthur finally gives a slow, dragging blink, Eames asks, “Good?”

“Very,” Arthur says.

Eames downs his drink as well. “My kind of man, without Cobb to babysit you until eternity.”

“Instead I’ve got an Eames to corrupt me. I’m not sure it’s the best trade, but I could be convinced,” Arthur says. He tilts his glass and squints into it, as if skeptical that the scotch was all there was.

The words are incongruous to Arthur’s indifferent tone, but he doesn’t overdo it -- the result is something perfectly open-ended that gives nothing away, and the only person who does it better is Eames himself. Arthur meets Eames’s eyes and smirks almost imperceptibly, as if aware of what he’s thinking.

Eames suddenly feels more alert, tuning in to that familiar zip of adrenaline through his body, the one that snaps his mind into reinvigorated focus by instinct. He signals for another drink. In the dim lighting of the bar, he has no qualms about keeping his eyes on Arthur for long stretches.

“What do you remember?” he eventually asks.

Arthur runs his tongue along his top teeth before speaking. “I was asleep. Then I was awake.”

And he also had a brain full of memories, except he was aware they were fake. For all intents and purposes, he had been born in 1982. He had lived all around the world with a single mother, and they spent the longest in Paris. The first time he rode a bike, he fell off and chipped his teeth on the sidewalk. He had spent a lot of time on boats because the smell of the ocean never got old.

Eames can imagine Arthur in every single one of these memories. In reality, they are most likely bits and pieces of other people’s memories cobbled together, whittled down to concrete images in Arthur’s mind with none of the significance attached.

As he talks, Eames notices the small things. The glint of his hair. His fingernails, perfect half-moon shapes and uniformly reflective in the low light of the bar. Even his imperfections -- the scar on the underside of his chin, the mismatched crow’s feet by his eyes -- seem too meticulously planned, falling into the category of _should be_ instead of just _is_.

“You’re feeling sorry for me,” Arthur says abruptly.

“I’m doing nothing of the sort,” Eames counters.

Arthur puts his glass down. “I think I’ve had enough.”

“You’re fucking predictable, even for a robot,” Eames says, because he’s noticed that everyone else makes it a point not to say the ‘R’ word, as if it’s calling attention to some kind of defect. “My very own android monk. I’d like to track down the person who designed your priggish personality and give him a good slap.”

“You’re an asshole,” Arthur says calmly.

Eames nods. “Duly noted. But you’re not going to dispute that you’re my very own?”

“You make me feel very angry sometimes.”

“Ah, but isn’t that interesting? That I make you feel at all?”

“I’m not your plaything to throw questions at. It’s clearly your defense mechanism, so I’ll let it pass,” Arthur says, still placid. He sits back and seems pleased for some reason. “On another note, I can see why you’re good at your job.”

Eames doesn’t ask for the why. He knows the why. With Arthur’s admission, and having exhausted the back-and-forth, the conversation seems to shift. Everyone around them is talking loudly, laughing, smiling -- he and Arthur are the only two sharing a bubble of silence.

Eames has some more drinks, enough so that he can feel his eyes start to become bloodshot and the bar looks a bit more out of focus and bright, like he’s peering through a fishbowl. Across the table, Arthur is holding his eighth empty glass, turning it with strategic taps of his fingers.

“Can you be killed?” Eames finally asks.

Arthur continues to cradle the glass, long fingers spidered over the rim. He touches his other hand to the back of his head. “With a well-placed head shot. Or so I was told.”

“And in dreams?”

Arthur just looks at him.

 

 **vii.**

Eames thinks of this look a few days later, when they’re running a training session. This is the first time he’s been in Arthur’s dreams. Arthur hadn’t been nervous, exactly, but something was off all the same, though Cobb hadn’t seemed to notice anything.

When they hook in, Eames sees that there are no projections in Arthur’s dreams; just shimmers of something in the distance, nothing corporeal. Ideal for uninterrupted training. The evasion exercises that Cobb has them run through are a little over the top but entertaining for that very reason. It might even be valuable during a real job, should they happen to encounter militarized projections. There are shooting ranges, hand-to-hand fighting with a set of butterfly knives for all of them, and lastly, an enormous open field with automatic guns shooting off belts of ammo in all directions.

Bullets are randomly flying all over the place and it’s a miracle they haven’t been rudely tossed out of the dream yet. Eames is hiding behind one of the walls, bored of all the theatrics. When there’s an audible click of empty rounds, he pokes his head around the east side and sees Arthur jogging toward him.

“Hurry, I’m bored,” Eames yells, and the last of his sentence is drowned out as the guns start up again.

The bullet hits Arthur in the heart. He bleeds red.

 

 **viii.**

“Did you know?” Eames asks Cobb. He keeps seeing it in his mind: the tear of the bullet, the pink of inner organs, the exit wound soaking the back of his suit jacket with blood. “It’s not normal.”

Cobb snorts. He gestures around them, at the lab bench, their work tables. “Nothing about any of this is normal. It makes sense, though. You’re a single android among billions of humans. That has to screw with your self-perception.” Despite his own logic, he seems disconcerted.

“What is it,” Eames asks flatly.

“I saw Arthur using the PASIV by himself once,” Cobb says in a low voice. “And you saw those things in his dream, right?”

Eames suddenly finds himself on the defensive, like they’ve switched positions in the conversation. “It was barely anything.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t nothing,” Cobb says in a hard voice.

“Let me ask you this: Arthur, as a prototype. Did they have others? How long did they monitor them for? Were they all identical?”

“I stole more than a billion dollars worth of private funding in the form of a sentient being. Do you really think I paused and asked these questions first?” Cobb says. He really can be a sarcastic bastard when he wants to be.

 

 **ix.**

The first job goes well. Cobb has no trouble picking up a second, because in LA there’s no shortage of people willing to backstab each other. This time it’s a producer of something-or-other, apparently battling it out with another producer of something-or-other in order to land something-or-other. Eames really doesn’t care. Lulls in this line of work are normal, and he usually takes off to some other place whenever they come up.

But he also figures it won’t hurt to stay for a little longer. It’s true that he’s bored, but this time he suspects that a locational change won’t help.

At least this dream is going to take place on a film lot. Eames figures he can have some fun with that one. Arthur is drawing up a neater version of Cobb’s drafts when he says, “You look at me a lot.”

Eames refuses to be caught off-guard in general. Most of the time, he succeeds. “As does Cobb,” he points out.

“Cobb is different. He’s more protective than anything else.” Arthur pauses, then repeats, “It’s different. With you, I mean.”

In some twisted way, Eames would have been disappointed if Arthur hadn’t noticed. But now that he has, he wishes it weren’t so. “Quite honestly, you fascinate me,” Eames says.

Arthur grimaces a little. “Still?”

“Even more so.”

“You mean my technology fascinates you,” Arthur corrects mildly.

“No,” Eames says, just as mild. “There’s a difference.”

“Is there?” Arthur finally looks up and raises an eyebrow. Eames wonders if he is even aware of how well he’s demonstrating the point.

“Of course,” Eames says, and both the simplicity of the answer and the firmness in his voice throw him off.

 

 **x.**

Cobb has already gone home for the night. Early days are common for him now, with Mal restricted to bed-rest. Eames is packing up as well and is almost done when he spies Arthur at the other end of the warehouse. He’s got a black duffel bag on top of a chair and is digging through it with no signs of leaving.

“My lease ran out. I haven’t had time to find another place,” Arthur explains when he sees Eames waiting, then he wordlessly holds up a silver cord as if that’s supposed to explain more. One end is already plugged into the wall, the other a thin, flattened rectangle.

“A bit of shoddy workmanship if you depend on electricity for survival,” Eames says. “How often must you do it?”

“About once a week,” Arthur says. “I think you’re a little jealous that all I need to recharge is to do it literally. You, on the other hand, require a far more extensive remedy after stumbling through half the week drunk on alcohol and whatever blond or redhead you manage to pick up.”

“Brunettes, actually,” Eames corrects. He leers, just a little bit, mostly because he’s supposed to. Arthur sighs, just the right amount of huffy, mostly because he’s supposed to.

That seems as good a place to exit as any, so Eames nods and pats the wall with his palm. “Right. I’ll leave you to it, then,” he says, and steps outside, sliding the door shut behind him.

There’s a single lamp attached to the exterior, way up near the roof overhang, and it throws out a weak yellow circle onto the sidewalk. Eames paces around it while smoking a cigarette, and then another. A light chill is settling in; he puffs his breath out experimentally, seeing if they’ll catch into white clouds. Then he sniffs at his hand, smelling old tobacco and a faint hint of cordite.

 _He’s not a person, you idiot_ , he thinks. In his mind, he sees Arthur bleeding out, eyes wide.

Without thinking about it, he tosses the cigarette butt and slides the door open again. It clanks loudly along the tracks, announcing Eames’s reappearance in a very obvious way. From this vantage point, he can most everything in the warehouse: its huge, sprawling expanse, the high ceilings, the sparse furniture layout in one corner.

And then there is Arthur with his duffel and chair. He has his back to Eames and is handling something, weight slightly shifted more onto his right leg. He just looks so small, surrounded by empty space, standing there by himself.

 

 **xi.**

The next morning, Eames walks out of the bedroom and sees Arthur lying on the couch, curled up on his side with his knees slightly bent. The cord is trailing over the beige rug and disappears into the back of Arthur’s head.

Eames leans against the wall. He looks and looks, taking in the slope of Arthur’s waist, and how he’s so very still.

 

 **xii.**

There’s always time to do some side research. Eames takes advantage of this, tips out books from library shelves with his index finger without even reading the titles completely. Anything from neuroanatomy to nanorobotics, but of course there’s barely anything in there of use. It’s seeming like he’d have to break in to some top-secret, eyes-only government files to learn anything of value and those days are behind him, mostly.

One time he gets drunk and starts watching _Small Wonder_ , partly serious and partly as a crude joke to himself, because he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.

“What are you up to?”

“Research,” Eames says.

Arthur laughs. Eames studies the way his face breaks into a broad smile, the way the seam of his mouth curves up, the way the corners of his eyes crinkle. A brief current of _something_ runs through Eames, like a slow wave washing up on shore, and then it’s gone.

 

 **xiii.**

Arthur’s packing away the suitcase by the time Eames comes through the door. The living room has slowly, surely become Arthur’s. Eames doesn’t remember exactly how long he’s been in LA, but it’s been long enough for Arthur to have claimed a space in the hallway closet and built up a neat pile of his things in the corner by the broken television.

He meets Eames’s eyes but doesn’t say a word.

“What do you do it for?” Eames asks without preamble. He pictures the Somnacin running through one of the hollow lines in Arthur’s arm -- and then what?

“Nothing, I suppose. It’s always the same anyway.” Arthur closes the PASIV and slides it underneath the sofa once more. After a beat, he says, “Don’t be nosy, Eames. Being a robot doesn’t mean I can’t have my own agenda, does it?”

Eames pretends to bristle at the self-deprecation. Pouring a drink for himself enhances the front. “Don’t say that. You’re just Arthur now,” he scolds.

“How magnanimous of you, bestowing a name upon me. Thank you.”

Arthur flops down onto the couch, resting his knuckles over his eyes as if he’s exhausted. In a different life, maybe he would be groggy in the mornings. He would complain of pain in his joints from typing too much. His posture would still be impeccable, but he’d have some sort of spine problems anyway. And allergies, as well.

“If you were allergic to something, what would it be?” Eames wonders aloud.

“Asparagus. The smell is very displeasing to me,” Arthur answers.

It takes a while for Eames to realize that he’s staring at the kitchen counter, still stuck in his last train of thought. He finishes off his drink and pours himself another.

 

 **xiv.**

Possibly, Eames’s biggest flaw is that he acts first and never asks questions. When it works, people call it impulsive. When it doesn’t, people call it reckless.

His job is to catch his fingers into the seams of people’s lives, to pry it up, to gut it just to see how it all fits together. He’s _good_ at it. Pushing. Nudging. Crossing the line. Afterward might come remorse, or triumph, or satisfaction, or any number of things, but the point is that there always is an afterward.

The point is that as soon as Arthur drags his eyes open, Eames touches his chin and kisses him, right there in the middle of the warehouse.

It lasts for a few seconds, and then Arthur is looking at him curiously from only a few inches away. “Is this -- ”

“No,” Eames cuts in. “It’s not.”

“Did you already know what I was going to say?” Arthur asks. Eames imagines him to be perfectly content to chalk that off as a simple experiment, just another thing to file away. This is what happens when you touch a hot stove. This is the recoil of a gun. This is how you kiss someone. Detached. Objective.

The silence curls in on itself. Eames stands up and moves away, back to the papers spread out on the table nearby.

“What did you mean by doing that? Tell me.” Arthur tilts his head a bit. It’s such a typical picture of a sort of childish concentration that Eames jolts out of the moment and laughs.

“Eames,” Arthur says, taking no notice of Eames’s change in mood.

“Right here, love,” Eames replies. “Nothing at all. Just call it an experiment.”

He crosses his arms on the table and leans forward cheekily, once again buoying them back from that unknown sea he’s led them into, back to this safe, careful place with the bright lights of the warehouse and the sun streaming in through the windows.

Riding right over it, leaving it behind -- this is the afterward.

 

 **xv.**

Arthur shows him, once Eames is soft with alcohol and clumsy with his hands. A thin slot on his scalp, about an inch or so above the base of his neck, hidden by layers of dark hair. Eames traces it with dragging fingers until Arthur reaches back and stills him by the wrist.

“Yes, alright,” Eames murmurs. But before he pulls away, he smooths Arthur’s hair back down with three slow strokes of his thumb.

He falls asleep for an hour, two at most. When he wakes, it’s drizzling outside and the apartment is lit with an evening gloom. He’s lying on the sofa; Arthur is sitting at the other end, a hand resting on Eames’s ankle.

He must know that Eames is awake, because he always knows, but he doesn’t move. Neither does Eames.

 

 **xvi.**

“I’m getting the itch again,” he tells Cobb, who smiles but gives him quizzical look at the same time.

“Long overdue, according to my Eames watch. And you only ever tell me about it after you’re at least a thousand miles away.”

“I’m a changed man.” Eames grins.

Cobb rolls his eyes. He looks tired. The baby is almost due; Eames had dropped by their house a few days ago and seen Mal with an identically drawn look on her face, one hand pressed against her lower back as she shuffled down the hallway.

“Is your numbered account the same?” Cobb asks, and when Eames nods, he says, “I’ll wire it if you take off before I can get it.”

Eames nods. “I’ll bet on a few for you, then.”

“Vegas again?” Cobb asks, though he should know better than to try to pin Eames down.

“Turns out what happens in Vegas not only doesn’t stay in Vegas, it follows you halfway around the world and makes you go into hiding for a good month.” Eames shrugs. “So probably not.”

When Cobb laughs, his entire body seems to relax. Eames smiles back, but in the back of his head, he’s thinking, _Arthur, Arthur_.

 

 **xvii.**

Arthur opens the door when Eames has his forearms buried into a t-shirt, just about to pull it over his head.

“Sorry,” he says, but he keeps standing there, holding the door handle, throwing a long shadow over the carpet.

“This is how most of my dreams begin,” Eames says lightly. “Feel free to carry on ahead.”

Instead of answering, Arthur’s eyes are traveling along Eames’s shoulder. “Tattoos,” he states, like he’s trying the word out. “I didn’t know you had them. What are they for?”

“Answers range anywhere from incredibly stupid decisions to deeply personal symbols,” Eames says, finally pulling the shirt over his head.

Arthur smiles. “Which one is the leprechaun?” He’s still tracing the lines of ink with his eyes, almost hungry in the way he repeats the paths.

“You wanted one,” Eames states belatedly.

Arthur nods. He’s wearing a charcoal gray sweatshirt. In a movement so casual and human that Eames almost feels sick, he reaches back, grabs it at the nape of the neck, and pulls it off over his head in one smooth movement. A perfect reverse echo of how Eames has just done.

There’s a mirror hanging on the wall by the dresser; he watches as Arthur turns his back to it, then cranes his chin over his shoulder to see the reflection. “Right here,” he says, crossing his right arm over and touching the top of his left shoulder-blade.

“But I wouldn’t want to fill out all the paperwork that comes as punishment for defacing government property,” he adds dryly. “And also, I’m almost positive it wouldn’t take. Synthetic material, you see.” He faces Eames, poking and pinching the skin on the back of his hand.

“And wouldn’t that freak them out,” Eames agrees. It feels like something is compressing his chest, making his lungs fight to get air.

Then, as Eames blinks dumbly, Arthur reaches for his belt buckle, pulling the end out of its loop and undoing the entire thing before asking, “Do you want to see more -- ”

Eames grabs Arthur’s hand, a movement so urgent that it seems out of place here in his flat, with just the two of them. “No,” he says.

For a moment, he’s afraid that Arthur’s eyes will narrow, that he’ll yank his hand away and leave, but Arthur only nods and lets his hands drop to his sides.

“Alright.”

All at once, Eames is awash with the overwhelming want to punch Arthur, to truly rile him up, none of that schoolyard teasing he’s gotten so used to paddling out. He wonders how angry Arthur can get; he wonders if Arthur has boundaries, and what they are.

Arthur suddenly looks away. He rubs up and down his sternum, using the heel of his wrist to dig in. “Did you notice that I bleed in dreams?” he asks. “It’s interesting.”

 

 **xviii.**

“Eames, what are you _doing_ in here.”

Arthur is clipping his words. He rises from the armchair, furious in his stance and how his jaw shifts.

It’s Eames’s apartment. The whole thing, exactly how it is in reality, even down to the three dead leaves of the plant on the coffee table. It smells like fresh laundry. Everything is overly familiar, but Eames still can’t stop looking around. There are no projections, and yet he can’t shake the feeling that they’re not alone.

“Eames,” Arthur says again. “ _Eames_. You need to leave.”

This time, he does look up. Arthur has his head slightly tilted, his features now pulled into such a melancholy expression that it can’t be anything but human. Eames walks closer.

“I can’t,” Arthur says.

“I’m not asking,” Eames says, sliding one hand around the back of Arthur’s neck. In this dream, his skin burns warm underneath Eames’s palm. He doesn’t move away when Eames leans in. They kiss briefly.

“You’re not,” Arthur repeats.

He kisses Arthur again. “Not asking for anything at all,” he says before kissing him for a third time, and then a fourth.

That last one seems to go on until Eames can’t breathe. He pulls back, inhales, and feels the cold barrel against his temple all at once. His eyes remain closed as Arthur pulls the trigger.

 

 **xix.**

It can’t be past six in the morning. The room is still filled with a gray haze, and all Eames can make out is a soft silhouette in the doorway.

“Arthur?” he rasps, groggy.

“Eames,” Arthur replies. He sounds like he always does.

 

 **xx.**

He says, “I think I had a dream.”


End file.
